The first time, I was pruning the pear tree at the back of my garden immersed in thoughts about which branches to cut and which to spare when a sound brushed through the morning and vanished.
This may be the most beautifully composed piece of writing I have ever encountered! So much information given, so many actions explained, an amazing job of teaching as well. Wow.
Aurelia, that is high praise, thank you. I spent a long time with this one, trying to let the woodcock teach me something rather than just writing about it. I'm glad it landed the way it did
Thanks Bill for this piece. What I love most here is how observation becomes transformation. This is the kind of writing that doesn’t just inform, it recalibrates.
That word — recalibrate — is exactly what I was hoping for. That's what the woodcock did to me, honestly. Two springs of flushing a bird I never saw properly, and then one morning in a thicket something just... shifted. I think that's what nature does when we finally slow down enough to let it. Really glad this found you.
I look forward to the woodcocks' arrival here in Maine.
Thanks for the eloquent and inspiring post.
The woodcock beak is flexible near the tip and has a separate set of muscles that operates the very tip of the beak as tongs or tweezers. The majority of the beak is stiff for plunging into the soil, but the tip is marvelously adapted to sense and grab worms and larvae when found. Remarkable. Since they eat larvae and worms, woodcock have no gizzard. Very unique.
And then there are the mating rituals and the moonwalk....
So well crafted. Bringing in the evolutionary history of the birds you feature is so powerful for readers to realize the functionality and artistry that evoution through natural selection, over millions of years, has created.
Thank you, that really touches on something I care about deeply. There is something almost humbling about sitting with the woodcock's anatomy and realizing that every strange detail, the inverted brain, the forward ears, the seismograph bill, is the result of millions of years of quiet problem solving. No designer, no blueprint, just pressure and time and survival. I find that more astonishing than any deliberate plan could be. Nature is the longest conversation there is, and the woodcock is one of its most remarkable sentences.
Wings of lace. I love that and I'm going to be thinking about it every time I hear that twitter now. Thank you for giving me new eyes for something I thought I already knew how to see. And thank you for the generous framing of what this work tries to do. Tuning and retuning the pace feels exactly right. It is never finished, that tuning. But the trying is its own reward.
You have the ability to draw the reader right into the space with you, to share your experience deeply. Thank you for all the encounters you make possible for us.
That is the whole goal, honestly. To bring you into the thicket with me, four feet from a bobbing woodcock, the leaf litter shifting around her feet. If I can do that then the hours of slow walking and the many undignified flushes where I startled a bird I never even saw were all worth it. Thank you for being the kind of reader who shows up fully for these encounters. That means a lot.
Just want you to know how much your articles move me. ... agreeing with Aurelia below - "the most beautifully composed" articles I read in my inbox. thank you thank you!
Elizabeth, thank you so much. That kind of generosity from readers is what keeps me going back into the woods with my camera and my embarrassingly slow walking pace. Genuinely grateful you are here.
Thank you for that kind word, and honestly the feeling you described, knowing something deeply but not quite having the language for it, is exactly where these essays begin for me too. I am just a few drafts further along than the feeling. As for finding a woodcock, I hope they are in your area because that first flush, that explosion at your feet and the twittering rising through the trees, will change how you walk through the woods forever. Check eBird for local sightings and head out at dusk in April to listen for the peent call in an open field near young forest. Go slowly.
Peeeenttt! That sound in the April dusk is one of my favorite things in the natural world. There is something almost absurd about it, this little round bird standing in a field making that buzzy insect noise before launching himself into a spiral 300 feet into the sky. And yes, the anatomy still stops me cold every time I think about it. An upside down brain. Ears between the eyes and the bill. It is like evolution was having a little fun. So glad you enjoyed it.
I did.I have heard the peeeennt sound in our own yard 2 years ago. And it is like seeing a shooting star. You see it, and then you second guess it..Like did that plump litte borb really just do a dance in mid air???
Stacy, this comment is its own small poem and I am honored it lives in the same space as the essay. That line cost me something to write because it is true in ways that go well beyond woodcocks. The narrowed gaze feels safe. Productive. Purposeful. Giving it up, even for a morning walk, asks something real of us. Thank you for walking slowly.
Reading ‘Soft Eyes’ I understood how it felt to be ‘at one with nature.’ You do it so beautifully. How can you transfer what you see, do and feel in nature to me & my mind? - so I can see, do and feel exactly what you experience. But you are doing it with only the written word and a few photos. It is truly a miracle of communication. Thank you for sharing this precious experience with your readers.
Ps. I love how beautifully you pruned your apple trees too. I see them every morning and have been admiring…
Hi Sonya, What a generous and moving thing to say, and it goes right to the heart of why I write. The miracle you are describing is what all good nature writing reaches for, that moment when the page dissolves and you are just there, four feet from a woodcock in the leaf litter, the fungal smell of the earth rising around you. If I managed even a glimpse of that for you I am a happy. I am glad you like the apple trees. They look even better now. We picked up all the limbs and spread wood chips around them.
What a beautiful picture you have painted, and you have renewed one of my New Year’s resolutions. Back in January, I decided to let my back yard “go”…I keep the front manicured for the neighborhood, but have stopped my mosquito service, haven’t blown a leaf except off the brick terrace, and will only cut the grass (well, the weeds and clover lol) until it’s length is impacting my 3 dorks ability to “do their business.” I live in a suburb of Atlanta, and would appreciate any suggestions as to plants that might entice not just birds, but pollinators to my yard!
As many readers before me here have said, this piece is transformational. My experience with using soft eyes really began intentionally when I read about using the technique to calm a spooky horse. My horse was not particularly spooky and he was good about keeping me safe in the saddle if something alarmed him, but I noticed that when I softened my eyes, my body did too, and then his did as well. It was soft eyes that led us to what became the best ride we every shared together, where it truly felt like we were floating and I was connected to his body in such a way that we were one. I have had a similar experience in our forest, hearing an odd sound, following it, then getting very close to it but not seeing it until I softened my view. It was a large red-tailed hawk on the ground with its capture, a squirrel. The hawk did not want to let go of the squirrel but I could see it was alarmed at my being so close. I softened, hoping it would feel that I was no threat, and then the hawk softened too. For what felt like a very long moment in time, we just gazed at one another. I was crouched close to the ground, maybe 4 feet away from the hawk. At some point he gathered the squirrel securely and lifted up through the trees and then away. You’ve captured that feeling, the way, for me at least, time seems to slow in those moments and everything seems very true to its way of being in the world. That doesn’t say exactly what I mean, but it’s as close as I can come to it. It would be interesting to know what happens in our body during that kind of time; my guess is that we get to the hormonal equivalent of peace and safety. Soft eyes let us see deer moving through forest when we take the time to stop and soften, to see something we’re looking for but can’t find, like a key dropped into the grass, it even works when talking to someone who is scared or in some way defensive and suddenly they soften too, in response, and what needs to be said can be said and heard. This is something we should teach children; it’s such a grounding, calming, and yet magical, empowering thing to do in one’s life, free and not able to be taken away once one has it. Thanks for sharing this in your always beautiful, multi-layered way. So many treasures among your posts!
This comment stopped me cold and I read it twice. The horse, the hawk, the squirrel, the four feet of charged air between you and a red-tailed hawk who decided you were safe enough to stay near. You have lived this essay from a completely different angle and arrived at exactly the same place. What you are describing with your horse is something I have felt in the woods, that the softening is not just visual, it moves through the whole body and then somehow across the space between species, and the other creature feels it and responds in kind. You are right that something real is happening physiologically in those moments, the nervous system downshifting, cortisol dropping, the threat circuitry going quiet. We are probably tapping into something very old, a frequency of non-aggression that predates language entirely. And your point about teaching children this is one I want to sit with for a long time. Imagine growing up knowing how to do this, knowing that stillness and receptivity are a kind of power, that the world opens toward you when you stop trying to manage it. Thank you for this. You gave me something today that I did not have before I read it.
Wow. Always fascinating. We don’t have leaves like yours here. I get a few under the peach and nectarine and magnolia in the backyard but I’ve rarely collected enough there to feel that I have to rake them.
My private little backyard is my place of serenity. There’ll regularly be little birds in the dense foliage of the camellias, azaleas and the sole Japanese maple. I inherited a beautiful tiny scrap of paradise when I bought this place but the stories are so very different to yours. I’m thankful I get to share yours through these posts. Thank you.
Hi Beth, A dense camellia with little birds moving through it sounds like paradise to me, and the fact that your leaves are few and your climate is different does not mean you are outside this story. You are already living it. A private backyard that feels like a scrap of paradise, tended with care, full of foliage and bird life, that is exactly the kind of threshold this essay is reaching toward. The woodcock may never find you but something will, and it will recognize what you have built before you do. Thank you for letting me into your corner of the world through your comment. That is its own kind of gift.
This may be the most beautifully composed piece of writing I have ever encountered! So much information given, so many actions explained, an amazing job of teaching as well. Wow.
Aurelia, that is high praise, thank you. I spent a long time with this one, trying to let the woodcock teach me something rather than just writing about it. I'm glad it landed the way it did
Lovely and generous reply! Thank you, Bill
Thanks Bill for this piece. What I love most here is how observation becomes transformation. This is the kind of writing that doesn’t just inform, it recalibrates.
That word — recalibrate — is exactly what I was hoping for. That's what the woodcock did to me, honestly. Two springs of flushing a bird I never saw properly, and then one morning in a thicket something just... shifted. I think that's what nature does when we finally slow down enough to let it. Really glad this found you.
I look forward to the woodcocks' arrival here in Maine.
Thanks for the eloquent and inspiring post.
The woodcock beak is flexible near the tip and has a separate set of muscles that operates the very tip of the beak as tongs or tweezers. The majority of the beak is stiff for plunging into the soil, but the tip is marvelously adapted to sense and grab worms and larvae when found. Remarkable. Since they eat larvae and worms, woodcock have no gizzard. Very unique.
And then there are the mating rituals and the moonwalk....
Thank you so much. I was hoping this essay would inspire people. Go slowly out there.
So well crafted. Bringing in the evolutionary history of the birds you feature is so powerful for readers to realize the functionality and artistry that evoution through natural selection, over millions of years, has created.
Thank you, that really touches on something I care about deeply. There is something almost humbling about sitting with the woodcock's anatomy and realizing that every strange detail, the inverted brain, the forward ears, the seismograph bill, is the result of millions of years of quiet problem solving. No designer, no blueprint, just pressure and time and survival. I find that more astonishing than any deliberate plan could be. Nature is the longest conversation there is, and the woodcock is one of its most remarkable sentences.
Those wings of lace! Amazing. Thank you for tuning and retuning your pace to join the symphony and share some of its beautiful melodies with us.
Wings of lace. I love that and I'm going to be thinking about it every time I hear that twitter now. Thank you for giving me new eyes for something I thought I already knew how to see. And thank you for the generous framing of what this work tries to do. Tuning and retuning the pace feels exactly right. It is never finished, that tuning. But the trying is its own reward.
What a kind and generous response. 🙏. Never finished, the trying its own reward. That lands for me. Yes.
You have the ability to draw the reader right into the space with you, to share your experience deeply. Thank you for all the encounters you make possible for us.
That is the whole goal, honestly. To bring you into the thicket with me, four feet from a bobbing woodcock, the leaf litter shifting around her feet. If I can do that then the hours of slow walking and the many undignified flushes where I startled a bird I never even saw were all worth it. Thank you for being the kind of reader who shows up fully for these encounters. That means a lot.
Just want you to know how much your articles move me. ... agreeing with Aurelia below - "the most beautifully composed" articles I read in my inbox. thank you thank you!
Elizabeth, thank you so much. That kind of generosity from readers is what keeps me going back into the woods with my camera and my embarrassingly slow walking pace. Genuinely grateful you are here.
Amazing depth! I can totally relate to this way of being in nature, but I do not have your gift for expressing it. So thank you for sharing your gift.
I would love to see a woodcock sometime! I will look it up and see if they are in my area or not.
Thank you for that kind word, and honestly the feeling you described, knowing something deeply but not quite having the language for it, is exactly where these essays begin for me too. I am just a few drafts further along than the feeling. As for finding a woodcock, I hope they are in your area because that first flush, that explosion at your feet and the twittering rising through the trees, will change how you walk through the woods forever. Check eBird for local sightings and head out at dusk in April to listen for the peent call in an open field near young forest. Go slowly.
Well, it looks like the Woodcock isn't as far west as Idaho. Sure a cute looking g bird!
The description of their evolutionary adaptations was amazing to read. I never knew that! They are such fun birds. Peeeenttt!
Peeeenttt! That sound in the April dusk is one of my favorite things in the natural world. There is something almost absurd about it, this little round bird standing in a field making that buzzy insect noise before launching himself into a spiral 300 feet into the sky. And yes, the anatomy still stops me cold every time I think about it. An upside down brain. Ears between the eyes and the bill. It is like evolution was having a little fun. So glad you enjoyed it.
I did.I have heard the peeeennt sound in our own yard 2 years ago. And it is like seeing a shooting star. You see it, and then you second guess it..Like did that plump litte borb really just do a dance in mid air???
This morning I take a slow walk with you. My footsteps waiting, patient. There is no urgency, simply a need to pause, to listen in the leaves.
This >> "To cultivate soft eyes is to lose the protection of the narrowed gaze."
Stacy, this comment is its own small poem and I am honored it lives in the same space as the essay. That line cost me something to write because it is true in ways that go well beyond woodcocks. The narrowed gaze feels safe. Productive. Purposeful. Giving it up, even for a morning walk, asks something real of us. Thank you for walking slowly.
Reading ‘Soft Eyes’ I understood how it felt to be ‘at one with nature.’ You do it so beautifully. How can you transfer what you see, do and feel in nature to me & my mind? - so I can see, do and feel exactly what you experience. But you are doing it with only the written word and a few photos. It is truly a miracle of communication. Thank you for sharing this precious experience with your readers.
Ps. I love how beautifully you pruned your apple trees too. I see them every morning and have been admiring…
Hi Sonya, What a generous and moving thing to say, and it goes right to the heart of why I write. The miracle you are describing is what all good nature writing reaches for, that moment when the page dissolves and you are just there, four feet from a woodcock in the leaf litter, the fungal smell of the earth rising around you. If I managed even a glimpse of that for you I am a happy. I am glad you like the apple trees. They look even better now. We picked up all the limbs and spread wood chips around them.
Wow - I have no words - thank you Bill!
No words is honestly the best review a nature essay can get. That's what the woodcock does too. See you out there.
Wow. So powerful! Thank you for this evocative essay about learning to see and find the woodcocks.
You are welcome. Thank you for reading and for all the work you do bringing people back into relationship with the wild.
What a beautiful picture you have painted, and you have renewed one of my New Year’s resolutions. Back in January, I decided to let my back yard “go”…I keep the front manicured for the neighborhood, but have stopped my mosquito service, haven’t blown a leaf except off the brick terrace, and will only cut the grass (well, the weeds and clover lol) until it’s length is impacting my 3 dorks ability to “do their business.” I live in a suburb of Atlanta, and would appreciate any suggestions as to plants that might entice not just birds, but pollinators to my yard!
As many readers before me here have said, this piece is transformational. My experience with using soft eyes really began intentionally when I read about using the technique to calm a spooky horse. My horse was not particularly spooky and he was good about keeping me safe in the saddle if something alarmed him, but I noticed that when I softened my eyes, my body did too, and then his did as well. It was soft eyes that led us to what became the best ride we every shared together, where it truly felt like we were floating and I was connected to his body in such a way that we were one. I have had a similar experience in our forest, hearing an odd sound, following it, then getting very close to it but not seeing it until I softened my view. It was a large red-tailed hawk on the ground with its capture, a squirrel. The hawk did not want to let go of the squirrel but I could see it was alarmed at my being so close. I softened, hoping it would feel that I was no threat, and then the hawk softened too. For what felt like a very long moment in time, we just gazed at one another. I was crouched close to the ground, maybe 4 feet away from the hawk. At some point he gathered the squirrel securely and lifted up through the trees and then away. You’ve captured that feeling, the way, for me at least, time seems to slow in those moments and everything seems very true to its way of being in the world. That doesn’t say exactly what I mean, but it’s as close as I can come to it. It would be interesting to know what happens in our body during that kind of time; my guess is that we get to the hormonal equivalent of peace and safety. Soft eyes let us see deer moving through forest when we take the time to stop and soften, to see something we’re looking for but can’t find, like a key dropped into the grass, it even works when talking to someone who is scared or in some way defensive and suddenly they soften too, in response, and what needs to be said can be said and heard. This is something we should teach children; it’s such a grounding, calming, and yet magical, empowering thing to do in one’s life, free and not able to be taken away once one has it. Thanks for sharing this in your always beautiful, multi-layered way. So many treasures among your posts!
This comment stopped me cold and I read it twice. The horse, the hawk, the squirrel, the four feet of charged air between you and a red-tailed hawk who decided you were safe enough to stay near. You have lived this essay from a completely different angle and arrived at exactly the same place. What you are describing with your horse is something I have felt in the woods, that the softening is not just visual, it moves through the whole body and then somehow across the space between species, and the other creature feels it and responds in kind. You are right that something real is happening physiologically in those moments, the nervous system downshifting, cortisol dropping, the threat circuitry going quiet. We are probably tapping into something very old, a frequency of non-aggression that predates language entirely. And your point about teaching children this is one I want to sit with for a long time. Imagine growing up knowing how to do this, knowing that stillness and receptivity are a kind of power, that the world opens toward you when you stop trying to manage it. Thank you for this. You gave me something today that I did not have before I read it.
Wow. Always fascinating. We don’t have leaves like yours here. I get a few under the peach and nectarine and magnolia in the backyard but I’ve rarely collected enough there to feel that I have to rake them.
My private little backyard is my place of serenity. There’ll regularly be little birds in the dense foliage of the camellias, azaleas and the sole Japanese maple. I inherited a beautiful tiny scrap of paradise when I bought this place but the stories are so very different to yours. I’m thankful I get to share yours through these posts. Thank you.
Hi Beth, A dense camellia with little birds moving through it sounds like paradise to me, and the fact that your leaves are few and your climate is different does not mean you are outside this story. You are already living it. A private backyard that feels like a scrap of paradise, tended with care, full of foliage and bird life, that is exactly the kind of threshold this essay is reaching toward. The woodcock may never find you but something will, and it will recognize what you have built before you do. Thank you for letting me into your corner of the world through your comment. That is its own kind of gift.